By Nuala O’Connor

          In my child­hood home, dif­fi­cult things were stored like smoke in a tight- lidded jar. Hurts, ills, and prob­lems were a visible miasma through the glass, but they would sit in there, dense and pal­pa­ble, not to be dis­turbed. As we— the seven children—got older and poked at the lid, tried to prise it off, to let out at least some of the smoke, we were told to set down the jar. Alter­nate­ly the response to any prising was, What jar? What smoke? We knew we had issues, but we pre­ferred murk­i­ness to clarity; we main­tained a com­mit­ment to our what­ev­er-you-say-say-nothing culture. This was the Ireland I was born into in 1970.

          In our home, crying was often silenced and it was frowned upon, as was being sick, or to malinger. My brother’s appen­dix almost burst inside him because his cries of pain were seen as exag­ger­a­tion. When another brother shot an arrow into my eye, my mother seemed more angry than con­cerned, while I screamed in agony. Doctor visits were rare, they were just another cost in the costly busi­ness of keeping nine people alive. Yes, we shared a loving home, but this was an era of benign parental neglect.

          My parents, like many Irish parents of the late twen­ti­eth century, were not big on praise. Back then it was almost unheard of, maybe even unpa­tri­ot­ic, to point out a person’s gifts, which was why we found North Amer­i­can pos­i­tiv­i­ty and enthu­si­asm so alarm­ing when we encoun­tered it. My parents were, of course, prod­ucts of their own upbringing—they were reared by people who were born in the late nine­teenth century, had expe­ri­enced several wars, and who knew poverty all too well. There was little time for leisure in their lives, or the lauding of talents.

          All this to say, as a slight­ly off-kilter girl in this large, cre­ative, mildly eccen­tric family, there wasn’t a hope of me getting an autism diag­no­sis. It was appar­ent to my mother that there was some­thing amiss. She com­ment­ed fre­quent­ly on my hyper-sen­si­tiv­i­ty and anxiety; my pen­chant for irra­tional­i­ty; my unto­ward thought process­es: “I think there’s some­thing wrong with your brain,” she liked to say.

          Yet, without knowing a thing about neu­ro­di­ver­gence, my mother fed my special interests—reading and writing—and praised my aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ments in that faint way of the nine­teen-sev­en­ties Irish mother. “Well, we’d expect good marks of you, Nuala.”

          Apart from my vora­cious reading, my mother often said, “Nuala has a great memory— like her father.” For a long time, I believed that my “great memory” meant all my mem­o­ries were sacred and exact, that my ver­sions of events were infal­li­ble. This notion has been cor­rect­ed by reread­ing my child­hood diaries to find that my brain has spun alter­nate nar­ra­tives around certain “true” memories—my crys­talline rec­ol­lec­tions are often flawed. Added to that, if my memory is so good, why have I always relied on rote learn­ing and rehearsal to prepare for exams, every­day con­ver­sa­tions, and, as a writer, to prepare for inter­views and events? I now know my brain was sig­nal­ing to me to learn how to speak like neu­rotyp­i­cal people, to script con­ver­sa­tions and research well, so I might blend in.

          Studies show that autis­tic people may have good seman­tic memory (remem­ber­ing facts) but impaired episod­ic memory (remem­ber­ing life expe­ri­ences). Maybe that’s why I can remem­ber the birth dates of primary school friends, and the reg­is­tra­tion plates of child­hood family cars, but would strug­gle to tell you what I was doing yes­ter­day. What­ev­er it is about people recall­ing events dif­fer­ent­ly, autis­tic fact-loving may be the reason I have spent so much of my writing life research­ing and writing his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tives. The minu­ti­ae of the lives I write about fas­ci­nate me; I get a bliss­ful thrill when I unearth juicy details and figure out how to weave them into my story in progress.

          Very few girls like me—few girls at all—were getting autism diag­noses until recent­ly, since autism has been seen as a male con­di­tion. The Diag­nos­tic and Sta­tis­ti­cal Manual of Mental Dis­or­ders (DSM) didn’t acknowl­edge it until its 2013 iter­a­tion, the DSM‑5. Even then, it under­played the myriad ways gender shapes autism. The DSM‑5 states that the male-to-female ratio of autism diag­noses is 4 to 1, yet some researchers believe autism in women is likely nearer to 2 to 1. This ratio likely reflects the under­diag­no­sis of autis­tic females, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who do not show intel­lec­tu­al dif­fer­ences. Accord­ing to the manual, this may happen “perhaps because of subtler man­i­fes­ta­tion of social and com­mu­ni­ca­tion dif­fi­cul­ties” in girls on the autism spectrum.

          Those man­i­fes­ta­tions occur because autis­tic girls, having been schooled to be “female”—good, willing, and amiable—expend huge energy working to hide dif­fer­ences which may be per­ceived as unto­ward. This behav­ior is called masking—a some­times delib­er­ate, some­times uncon­scious attempt to conceal con­fu­sion and strug­gles, in order to seem “normal.” Masking can be a form of social pol­i­tics. Autis­tics tend toward blunt­ness, but autis­tic women who are skilled at fitting into neu­rotyp­i­cal norms, learn social codes by watch­ing and lis­ten­ing. We try to adopt what we observe. We learn when our opin­ions or tastes might be too much, so we don’t share. We temper our fidgety bodies and blurt­ing ten­den­cies. Autis­tic people rarely crave the lime­light; even the tiny spot­light of a tiny group can feel exces­sive, so staying quiet and con­tained feels safest, often.

***

          Until I real­ized I was autistic—just over a year ago—I lived life acknowl­edg­ing myself as a hyper­sen­si­tive intro­vert, used to acting a part in company, cov­er­ing up my true feel­ings and thoughts. I felt dis­con­nect­ed, except at home where I could be myself. I didn’t realize just how much I was tamping my true nature. I was mangled by lone­li­ness and stress, by not knowing when to speak or not, by trap­ping my body into a still­ness it didn’t want. I found no answers in psy­chother­a­py. But hearing a late-diag­nosed autis­tic woman on the radio outline her strug­gles, I became hyper-alert as I men­tal­ly ticked off her neu­ro­di­ver­gent check­list. Loathing of small talk. Tick. Social anxiety; panic in noisy places; dislike of phone con­ver­sa­tion. Tick, tick, tick. Love of research; emo­tion­al spin­outs; failed friend­ships; obses­sive inter­ests and enthu­si­asms; rigid­i­ty around time and food; rigid­i­ty in general. Ticks all over. My husband and I looked at one another, and I began to cry with relief.

          A passage I read in Anaïs Nin’s diary a few years ago screamed “truth” to me: “I have always been tor­ment­ed by the image of mul­ti­plic­i­ty of selves. Some days I call it rich­ness, and other days I see it as a disease, a pro­lif­er­a­tion as dan­ger­ous as cancer. My first concept about people around me was that all of them were coor­di­nat­ed into a whole, whereas I was made of a mul­ti­tude of selves, of frag­ments.” Ah yes, frag­ment­ed and mul­ti­ple, while others seem so very whole. I have long carried around a palimpsest of variant selves, scratched one atop another, that have made the parsing of the who-am‑I ques­tion so very hard.

          Aus­tralian come­di­an Hannah Gadsby said that getting her autism diag­no­sis at thirty years of age felt like “an exfo­li­a­tion of shame.” I, too, held a lot of shame about the col­lec­tion of idio­syn­crasies that make me me. I guess the chorus of “You’re too sensitive/emotional/quiet/blunt/weird” across the years had done its work. Ditto the com­ments about my strange outfits, as I threw off one look for another: androg­y­ny for all black; all black for Aran ganseys and jeans; jumpers for Indian dresses and beads. Perhaps I was further shamed into hiding by the quash­ing of my hair-twirling, hair-sucking, scalp-poking, body-twirling, and ever-a-fidget fingers that I now rec­og­nize as stim­ming behaviors.

          “Stop doing that!” the parent-teacher-friend-partner would say.

          “I can’t!” I’d reply, but then I would sit on my hands, and note yet another thing that made me a misfit.

***

          Like many autis­tics, I tend to take things lit­er­al­ly, and to strug­gle around abstract con­cepts and social com­mu­ni­ca­tion. So, often, when we hear some­thing, we believe it—what reason would someone have to be untruth­ful? This may be the reason I ended up in many thorny sit­u­a­tions over the years, in the areas of rela­tion­ships and friend­ship. If someone was kind, I believed they were just that, and became con­fused and bereft when I was let down. My radar for slime­balls, users, game players, and the agenda-laden is faulty.

          Like­wise, I find it hard to evade direct questions—I will give the truth because I’m not a skilled liar. And I some­times miss the sub­tleties and under­cur­rents in con­ver­sa­tion, the knowing looks and kind lies. These traits have prob­a­bly caused me to prefer the world of writing and books to the world at large. In a story, I can take my time and spot what is going on. I value direct­ness and honesty in life, so I like writing that feels truth­ful, even if I know nothing of the truth behind the story, and even if the truth pre­sent­ed is a lie. Writers need to be skilled, on-page deceivers. Gio­van­ni Boccaccio’s sto­ry­telling was described as “an art­ful­ly mali­cious oper­a­tion,” which may be accu­rate about all writing, but espe­cial­ly writing that sets out to delib­er­ate­ly lie, hood­wink, or present unre­li­able narrators.

          As a sto­ry­teller, I view life through a par­tic­u­lar and per­son­al lens, one that is influ­enced by every­thing from child­hood to later life expe­ri­ence. The writer’s filter. We see and believe what we choose to, and for me, in life, what is true is not always easily read. Truth can be an act of will and this is good news for those of us who like to write stories. Chekhov spoke about the fiction writer cor­rect­ly for­mu­lat­ing prob­lems, but it being up to the reader to resolve them. For me, resolv­ing fic­tion­al prob­lems as writer and reader is much easier than reading a room full of real-life people. I can cope with on-page deceivers—they expect nothing from me—but, in company, I often end up con­fused and silent, my brain anx­ious­ly stuck on the meaning or verac­i­ty of things said, when every­one else has moved on.

***

          The yarn of autism ran com­plete­ly through me for fifty-plus years; it was the warp and weft of me, the bone and sinew, the muscle and meat, the thrum and thrash. But being igno­rant of my neu­ro­di­ver­gence until my fifties means I have no lived expe­ri­ence as an autis­tic child, teenag­er, or younger adult. Autism was both invis­i­ble and unknown, though I could feel its snarled tug. When I took up the yarn—an Ariadne looking for escape from seeping cave walls—I moved forward fal­ter­ing­ly, trying hard to discard the humil­i­a­tion around who I am and how I operate, but also all the accu­mu­lat­ed fear and guilt. Until my diag­no­sis, I could never ask someone to be under­stand­ing or patient with me, when autism was driving my vast sen­si­tiv­i­ties, wrong inter­pre­ta­tions, and some­times explo­sive reactions.

          The mael­strom of unease inside me, caused by unbe­long­ing, anxiety, and general awk­ward­ness, is still present. But now I under­stand that my neu­rotype drives those feel­ings. By accept­ing that autism does make me dif­fer­ent, I can try to be with people on my own terms. I’ve had to acknowl­edge my idio­syn­crasies and strug­gles as inher­ent, and work with, instead of against them. I’m now prac­tic­ing nec­es­sary self-com­pas­sion while owning the truth of my autis­tic self. I spent my life feeling mad, bad, and guilty for behav­iors and feel­ings that seemed inbuilt to me, but that appeared willful to others. But my stumble into the dawn, whole, after a life­time of being unrav­eled, means I am now able to reknit myself, or at least begin to patch my wounds.

This story orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 20. Support local book­sellers and inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ers by order­ing a print copy of the mag­a­zine.

Photo by Drew Beamer